She made trips to Europe in 1910 and 1911 and after 1912, became involved in suppressing unrest in several Central American countries, including the United States occupation of Veracruz during the Mexican Revolution.

After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Kansas was employed as a training ship for new personnel.

After returning from the second cruise, Kansas was decommissioned and sold for scrap in August 1923 according to the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty.

The Connecticut class followed the Virginia-class battleships, but corrected some of the most significant deficiencies in the earlier design, most notably the superposed arrangement of the main and some of the secondary guns.

Despite the improvements, the ships were rendered obsolescent by the revolutionary British battleship HMS Dreadnought, completed before most of the members of the Connecticut class.

As was standard for capital ships of the period, Kansas carried four 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes, submerged in her hull on the broadside.

The press in both countries began to call for war, and Roosevelt hoped to use the demonstration of naval might to deter Japanese aggression.

[8] The fleet then turned north for the Philippines, stopping in Manila, before continuing on to Japan where a welcoming ceremony was held in Yokohama.

The ships then crossed the Atlantic to return to Hampton Roads on 22 February 1909, having traveled 46,729 nautical miles (86,542 km; 53,775 mi).

[9] A week after returning from the voyage, Kansas steamed to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for an overhaul after the lengthy period at sea.

The work was completed on 17 June, and Kansas thereafter began a peacetime routine of maneuvers and various training exercises that continued throughout the following year.

A second trip to Europe took place in mid-1911; this time, the division steamed into the Baltic Sea, visiting several ports in the region, including Copenhagen, Denmark, Stockholm, Sweden, Kronstadt, Russia, and Kiel, Germany.

She returned to Hampton Roads to greet a squadron of German warships—the battlecruiser SMS Moltke and the light cruisers Bremen and Stettin—that visited the port from 28 May to 8 June.

Kansas then embarked on a training cruise along the east coast of the United States for midshipmen from the US Naval Academy on 21 June.

On 1 July, Kansas steamed out of Norfolk to carry the remains of the recently deceased Venezuelan ambassador to the United States back to his home country.

The ship then resumed the normal peacetime routine of training exercises off the east coast and off Cuba until 30 September 1916, when she underwent another overhaul in Philadelphia.

On 10 July, she was assigned to the 4th Battleship Division (4th BatDiv) and was tasked primarily with training naval personnel in the Chesapeake Bay.

On the 17th, South Carolina slipped her starboard propeller, which forced her to reduce speed to 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph) using only the port shaft.

She left San Pedro on 11 August bound for the Panama Canal and crossed into the Caribbean for a stop at Guantánamo Bay.

Rear Admiral Charles Frederick Hughes raised his flag aboard Kansas in Philadelphia as the flagship of the 4th BatDiv.